Harvest down to the final days in most of state

The recent spell of warm and sunny weather has allowed many farmers to either finish come very close to completing this year’s harvest.

The latest U.S.D.A crop report shows 94 percent of the corn crop has been harvested — and for the first time this year the harvest is not behind the five-year average. Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Bill Northey talked about the harvest during a stop in northwest Iowa.

“It’s really coming along very good, we have some parts of Iowa that are done, and the tillage is done and fertilizer going on the ground,” Northey says. He doesn’t expect it to take too much longer before all the combines have finished their work.

“We do see a lot of progress, the forecast is good, the conditions are very good now, the corn is drying down and I would imagine within the next week or so there won’t be too many acres left in the field,” Northey says.

The numbers he’s hearing on the harvest are good for corn. “Average yield in Iowa across all acres expected to be199 bushels and acre,” Northey says. “And 59 bushels and acre for soybeans. Again that’s a record.”

Northey, who farms near Spirit Lake says his harvest is completed after some weather setbacks. “We had a little wet spell in the middle, so we had a little bit of mud in the middle. And I had a little too much rain in May when I planted some of the corn, so we had some stand issues. My corn crop wasn’t the best I’ve had — it was a little bit better last year than this years,” Northey says.

The Agriculture Secretary says he has some post-harvest work left to do before wrapping everything up for the years. While harvest is winding down in most of the state, southwest and south central Iowa still have more than 10 percent of the corn crop and almost 10 percent of the soybean crop remaining to be harvested.